WASHINGTON  There may be a silver lining in the election-loss cloud hanging over Rep. Jean Schmidt: the Miami Township Republican could shrug off a 2011 House Ethics Committee decision ordering her to repay more than $400,000 in legal bills.

Ethics experts said Schmidt is free to ignore the ethics committee ruling once she is out of office in early January.

"When someone graduates from high school, they're no longer subject to detention," said Jan Baran, a Washington attorney who specializes in ethics and campaign finance issues. The House ethics ruling in Schmidt's case, he said, "is a congressional form of detention."

William V. O'Reilly, a former staff director for the ethics committee, agreed there is nothing the committee can do to enforce its rulings once a lawmaker leaves the House.

Schmidt's spokesman, Barrett Brunsman, noted she has a legal expense trust, a special account she set up to raise money to pay off that debt. That, he said, is evidence that she intends to repay the fees.

"It continues to accept donations," he said of the legal fund. "The fact that she set up the legal expense fund demonstrates that she wants to pay these bills."

But Schmidt has struggled to raise money for that account — a task that will probably become even more difficult now that she is a lame-duck lawmaker.

Brunsman brushed aside a question about whether she could raise enough to repay the debt before her current term is up. "It's too soon to say how much will have been raised before the end of her term," Brunsman said. "That question seems a bit far off at this point in time."

Pressed on whether, if Schmidt doesn't raise the necessary funds, she would still try to fulfill the House ethics order once she's out of office, Brunsman reiterated that the legal expense trust shows that she "has always intended to pay her legal bills."

Last August, the ethics panel concluded that Schmidt had unknowingly accepted an improper gift from the Turkish Coalition of America. Through an affiliated group called the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund, the coalition paid lawyers who were representing Schmidt in two cases against Krikorian.

The ethics panel said she had to repay that money, which it estimated at about $500,000. Schmidt has since calculated the outstanding fees to be about $440,000.

She recently used about $43,000 of her own money to pay off a sliver of the legal debt — bills the ethics committee said she could not pay with money raised through the legal trust.

Schmidt had planned to pay off the rest of the debt with money raised through the legal trust. But so far, that account is virtually empty.

Her last report, filed Jan. 31, showed that Schmidt had not raised any money for her legal expense trust except $10 that she contributed herself. When she filed that January report, Brunsman said her next report, due in April, would show at least one contribution, for $5,000, or about 1% of what she owes.

On Monday, asked if Schmidt had raised more than that $5,000 donation, Brunsman said: "I think we're going to have two wait until that report is due before that information becomes available."

He also demurred when asked if it would be even harder for Schmidt to raise money for her legal expense fund now that she has been defeated in her bid for re-election to GOP challenger Brad Wenstrup. "Time will tell," he said.

If she doesn't raise enough, though, Schmidt is free to shrug off the House ethics committee ruling. That's because the committee only has jurisdiction over current lawmakers and staffers.

"It's not unusual for members who have matters before the ethics committee to basically stall until they have left Congress," said Baran, the Washington ethics attorney. "And then it's over. … Once she's no longer a congresswoman, there will be no legal requirement for her to make any payments."

Brunsman did not dispute that assessment.

"No laws were broken," noted Brunsman. And when her term is up, "she's just a typical U.S. citizen."